World of Warcraft: Dragon Desperation

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The writing has always been crappy.

Parts of the writing were crappy for sure, like the Orcs who just escaped imprisonment allowing slavers like Sylvanas or Gallywix to join the Horde. But there were a lot of strong, well written storylines like the Cata-MoP war arc. Most of MoP is pretty good. The overall quality of the storylines definitely declined after Metzen left, though. I am hard pressed to think of any good storylines after WoD. I can think of individual moments, like experiencing the Burning of Teldrassil as an alliance player, but not entire storylines.

 

[J1M]

The writing has always been crappy.

Parts of the writing were crappy for sure, like the Orcs who just escaped imprisonment allowing slavers like Sylvanas or Gallywix to join the Horde. But there were a lot of strong, well written storylines like the Cata-MoP war arc. Most of MoP is pretty good. The overall quality of the storylines definitely declined after Metzen left, though. I am hard pressed to think of any good storylines after WoD. I can think of individual moments, like experiencing the Burning of Teldrassil as an alliance player, but not entire storylines.

Fun fact: the tree only burned because Afrasiabi insisted on it.

 

[TedNugent]

Afaik Orcs were originally ripped off Warhammer's Greenskins, and had little to no variation from these. They were vicious raiders interested mostly in pillaging and raping villages, hailing from poisonous, treacherous lands with poisonous, treacherous-sounding names such as "The Black Morass".
As soon as Warcraft II, Blizzard started to give 'em some "good savage" vibes, but it really is Warcraft III that redeemed their awful exactions figuratively and narratively by having Grom Hellscream heroically sacrifice himself at the end of their campaign. And Thrall who's, still to this day, a good guy with 0 flaw.

Although the background is that Blizzard literally wanted the Warhammer license, and the aesthetic was clearly copypasta from Warhammer fantasy, their actual characterization is literally nothing alike, TBH. Other than them both being green, having tusks and pillaging, they're actually not really that similar.

Warhammer orcs are vastly more unique, creative, and interesting, and possess comic variety far outstripping any orc equivalent in any other form of fiction, including the vanilla diarrhea in LOTR that created the trope in the first place. You can accuse Games Workshop of ripping off a lot of shit, their orcs are legit. And even the gobbos are pretty dope, Gloomspite Gitz are fucking awesome.

Warhammer orcs are weird as shit and one of the shining points of the entire Warhammer fantasy fiction. Of course, the 40k orks are far superior and always have been, but I digress.

Greenskins Orcs are now a rather peaceful people who only aspire to farm some ancient gods and other cosmic demiurges in order to acquire phat loot. That's canon.

Nah, they retconned the fuck out of that approach, and then beat it to death with a hammer and clobbered the corpse well after it was degenerative and rotting. They made multiple attempts to bring back Warcraft II orcs, including literally using a time travel Macguffin to go back to Draenor and prove it was the orcs all along right before they submitted to the demons again anyway with perfect knowledge that it entailed the enslavement of their entire race.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

warcraft 1 orcs barely had any background at all beyond being chaos incarnate
even the doodles of the orcs in the manual look like they're from a warhammer supplement

 

[TedNugent]

It's not really that Warcraft orcs weren't generic as fuck (see D&D), it's that Warhammer orcs are particularly unique in terms of their biology, e.g. they're literally asexual half-fungoid animals that reproduce via spores and have an affinity with the other "orkoid" races with similar biology, e.g. squigs, gobbos, and the like. As well as their latent psychic/WAAAAGH energy, animosity, etc, their "might makes right" social structure, cockney accents and comic nature, etc.

Warcraft orcs are basically your generic fantasy orcs based on even more generic marauder tropes. They probably share more in common culturally with the Northmen of the Warhammer setting in that sense. They dress more similarly to Chaos marauders, have an affinity for demons, raid villages, etc. The only thing that really set them apart originally was the fact that they were interdimensional raiders, which was there from the beginning and was expanded upon in Warcraft II.

You could obviously make a reductionist argument that everything in fantasy springboards from the Tolkein archetypal template, particularly high elves and dwarves in nearly every form of pop culture fantasy garbage, and Warhammer is as guilty of that as anything else. In fact, Warhammer's greenskins are the most unique and flavorful element of Warhammer; they really aren't at all a Tolkein copypasta, and are possibly the only truly original thing in the entire setting.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

fungus orcs are wh40k, it has never been confirmed for warhammer fantasy orcs. Especially not by 1994.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

from The Enemy Within 5 - Empire in Flames(1989)

 

[Larianshill]

Greenskins Orcs are now a rather peaceful people who only aspire to farm some ancient gods and other cosmic demiurges in order to acquire phat loot. That's canon.

I wish that was true. In WoW they (and the Horde as a whole) have gone moustache-twirling villain several times, showing us that Thrall is really one of the good ones, and orcs are only noble savages while under his leadership. The moment he's gone, they immediately find the most genocidal, monstrous dictator they can find and rally under his (or her) banner, and then they go "we dindu nuffin, we didn't know war is bad" every time they're beaten. And then they're let off the hook.
I'm sure that after Dragonflight doesn't pull the arbitrary number Blizzard wants, their marketing team will demand that the writers "bring WAR back to WARCRAFT" and we get another faction war expansion, where orcs try to take over the world for the Nth time.

And that's discounting the Iron Horde, by the way, from the time travel expansion. All this time we were led to believe that orcs were only evil because of demonic influence, but then Blizzard literally shoves us into the time machine to show us that no, they actually would be just as bad without the demons. And it would be fine, based even, if any of this was actually intentional.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

If there is a war arc again I am positive that the Alliance will be construed as the bad guys, specifically the Gilneans and the Night Elves will be made out to be wrong for resenting the people who wiped out their nations with plague or fire. Or human supremists or something.

 

[Larianshill]

That's what everyone thought would happen in BFA, and everyone was wrong.

 

[Ravielsk]

If there is a war arc again I am positive that the Alliance will be construed as the bad guys, specifically the Gilneans and the Night Elves will be made out to be wrong for resenting the people who wiped out their nations with plague or fire. Or human supremists or something.

What do you mean "constructed"? Don't you know the Alliance has been the villain faction since day one. Just remember what they did to camp Taurajo!

 

[rusty_shackleford]

If there is a war arc again I am positive that the Alliance will be construed as the bad guys, specifically the Gilneans and the Night Elves will be made out to be wrong for resenting the people who wiped out their nations with plague or fire. Or human supremists or something.

What do you mean "constructed"? Don't you know the Alliance has been the villain faction since day one. Just remember what they did to camp Taurajo!

theramore was a legitimate target for attack
you aren't a neutral target if two groups are at war and you let one use your land for staging attacks

 

[RaggleFraggle]

The overall quality of the storylines definitely declined after Metzen left, though.

Metzen is a piss-poor writer who set a low bar to begin with. He wrote that idiotic opening scene to WC3. He offensively writes wars as soap operas revolving around romance between idiot sociopath generals. He can’t keep simple continuity straight. His writing ability is about the level of Rings of Power at best. Despite his general incompetence he gets praised because of nostalgia and video game stories having shit standards to begin with. The background lore in the WC2 and SC1 manuals (which he claims to have wrote) are serviceable, but he can’t write stories well.

He wrote a grand total of one novel on his own, Blood & Honor, and it’s embarrassingly amateurish. The plot can be summarized as “Wait, orcs are people too? Some of them didn’t support the war?”

 

[Reever]

In WoW they (and the Horde as a whole) have gone moustache-twirling villain several times

It's whenever the plot demands there needs to be another faction war. It's probably easier to have villains for Horde since a lot of the characters were morally-grey (the warcraft kind of morally-grey) and than you just turn them into "literally hitler" because you have no writing capabilities (Garrosh, Sylvanas). And the ones that are straight up good you just kill them off (Vol'Jin, Saurfang, Cairne), or you remove them from the story (Thrall in Cata/MoP) in order to create some fake drama.
I agree with Val the Moofia Boss that the next faction conflict is probably going to start with Alliance as the bad guys mostly on the basis that I don't think there's any Horde characters left that they can ruin.

 

[Ravielsk]

Metzen is a piss-poor writer who set a low bar to begin with.

Metzen most likely built his career on stolen credit. I say this because his writing while never as genius as fans like to claim only got progressively worse over the years. WC1 and WC2 were serviceable Warhammer clones with some of sharpest edges smoothed over and WC3 was the fun universe expansion that may not have been 100% there yet but it was a very strong story and basis for future expansion. A basis that Metzen himself threw out the window right after the release of TBC where basically all the previously established lore and characters were flushed down the toilet and replaced with high-school fanfiction.

Its not that he got just worse, Metzen started writing the story like a complete retard that read the wikipedia cliff notes version of the lore. And it never got better. The man straight up started ignoring his own setups for the most cringe shit and misplaced shit one could think of(Arthas throwing away his humanity, Muradin surviving, Sylvanas somehow not being a villain despite being set up as such since WC3). I am 100% positive that someone else wrote "his" early work with Metzen being basically just the idea guy or just straight up thief. Otherwise I have no idea how could a supposedly professional writer literary destroy his own work like that.

 

[MajorMace]

It might simply have been easier to handle his job while writing briefings for straight-forward rts campaigns than writing for an MMO.
Which, unsurprisingly, comes with its lot of specificities. Specificities which themselves had yet to be identified considering the rather scarce cases of study.
I guess that, at some point, they realised it wasn't possible to make sense of their shit and went like "alright fuck it" and just wrote for the purpose of setting up the content in their mmo.

I guess it's probably been debunked since then, but I always wondered (and never actually searched for the answer) whether their initial intention was to have 4 factions as in WC3, and found themselves unable to deliver, scrapping it all by forcing undeads into the horde (for absolutely no reason) and night elves into the alliance (not better).
It couldn't get good from there, I reckon.

 

[J1M]

Metzen is a piss-poor writer who set a low bar to begin with.

Metzen most likely built his career on stolen credit. I say this because his writing while never as genius as fans like to claim only got progressively worse over the years. WC1 and WC2 were serviceable Warhammer clones with some of sharpest edges smoothed over and WC3 was the fun universe expansion that may not have been 100% there yet but it was a very strong story and basis for future expansion. A basis that Metzen himself threw out the window right after the release of TBC where basically all the previously established lore and characters were flushed down the toilet and replaced with high-school fanfiction.

Its not that he got just worse, Metzen started writing the story like a complete retard that read the wikipedia cliff notes version of the lore. And it never got better. The man straight up started ignoring his own setups for the most cringe shit and misplaced shit one could think of(Arthas throwing away his humanity, Muradin surviving, Sylvanas somehow not being a villain despite being set up as such since WC3). I am 100% positive that someone else wrote "his" early work with Metzen being basically just the idea guy or just straight up thief. Otherwise I have no idea how could a supposedly professional writer literary destroy his own work like that.

I agree with you that he wasn't up to the task of being chief writer. He needed someone he trusted to fill in the details between the cool highlight reel scenes he had in mind.

However, his role and value was paramount to the success of things like World of Warcraft in the form of charismatically pulling everyone in the same direction so that the output of 100 other people was enthusiastic and consistent enough to feel coherent.

It's unfortunate that he was branded/viewed chief storyteller for these efforts instead of being recognized for what he was actually doing because that led to things like StarCraft 2's plot.

Example of Metzen's true role: showing up to work one day and painting this on the wall. People ask him what he's doing. He tells them real worlds have real maps.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

after Dragonflight doesn't pull the arbitrary number Blizzard wants

World of Warcraft: Blizzard Desperation

 

[RaggleFraggle]

It's unfortunate that he was branded/viewed chief storyteller for these efforts instead of being recognized for what he was actually doing because that led to things like StarCraft 2's plot.

The plots of SC1 and WC3 aren’t as stellar as people like to think. They’re still terrible soap operas that trivialize their own worldbuilding and feel like theme parks. The orcs were previously introduced as conquistadors then had their agency removed by saying “it was really demons” which is so fucking offensive to every real culture that suffered genocide. The zerg were introduced as these really cool galaxy eating monsters with an esoteric plan to become “perfect” then got downgraded to mindless slaves of a psycho chick with boyfriend issues who everyone acts like idiots around so her transparent and idiotic plans work.

These were never well written stories. I see some good ideas here and there, but the execution is fucking garbage.

Here’s a thought experiment to show you precisely how it’s so obviously stupid: try writing your own original setting with a loosely similar premise and see whether you make the same creative decisions as Metzen did or if you dismiss them as nonsensical to the storytelling

 

[hello friend]

Oh nooo Admiral Proudmoore why do you hate the orcs

stop being mean

 

[Sykar]

Greenskins Orcs are now a rather peaceful people who only aspire to farm some ancient gods and other cosmic demiurges in order to acquire phat loot. That's canon.

I wish that was true. In WoW they (and the Horde as a whole) have gone moustache-twirling villain several times, showing us that Thrall is really one of the good ones, and orcs are only noble savages while under his leadership. The moment he's gone, they immediately find the most genocidal, monstrous dictator they can find and rally under his (or her) banner, and then they go "we dindu nuffin, we didn't know war is bad" every time they're beaten. And then they're let off the hook.
I'm sure that after Dragonflight doesn't pull the arbitrary number Blizzard wants, their marketing team will demand that the writers "bring WAR back to WARCRAFT" and we get another faction war expansion, where orcs try to take over the world for the Nth time.

And that's discounting the Iron Horde, by the way, from the time travel expansion. All this time we were led to believe that orcs were only evil because of demonic influence, but then Blizzard literally shoves us into the time machine to show us that no, they actually would be just as bad without the demons. And it would be fine, based even, if any of this was actually intentional.

Which is just another nail in the coffin of retarded fan fic tier writing. Even fan fic usually manages to find a somewhat consistent narrative but not the WoW shit tier writers. Either have them being the bad guys, or let them be "good" guys who fell under demonic influence and became bad because of that.
It feels like they could never decide if the Horde is the bad guys or not. Personally, I always found a "grey" approach to be more interesting anyway, but I am fine as bad or a good guy, just give me some consistency. I was playing UD all the time anyway because they were to me the most interesting faction, but as expected also the one with the least realized potential because Blizzard is too chicken shit for anything.

If there is a war arc again I am positive that the Alliance will be construed as the bad guys, specifically the Gilneans and the Night Elves will be made out to be wrong for resenting the people who wiped out their nations with plague or fire. Or human supremists or something.

What do you mean "constructed"? Don't you know the Alliance has been the villain faction since day one. Just remember what they did to camp Taurajo!

What a fucking retarded picture. Apart from Theramore, which was a legit military target, the bulk of the evil shit was done by the UD. The human farm is utterly retarded, like Bioware grade A level retarded, and made my head shake even in Classic for its sheer stupidity, since what do the Forsaken get from burying humans like that in the ground? Wait, nothing. A waste of time and resources. Hell, that Garrosh became warchief was stupid as fuck anway. "Yo heard you are the son of Grom, you must be good warchief then!". They could not find any means of subtly increasing tensions between Horde and Alliance, they had to do it in the dumbest and most incompetent way possible. And when the Horde did get good warchiefs the writers quickly killed them and made the batshit insane morons chief again, see Vol'jin and Sylvannas.
But sure, let us just hand wave everything away. "Muh Alliance da good guyz, never dun anything wrungz!". /yawn

 

[Heroic Liberator]

UD

What's that?

 

[Sykar]

These guys:

 

[Heroic Liberator]

These guys:

...Forsaken?

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Ah, so U(n)D(ead). Thought it was some two word acronym.